ABSTRACT
The global environment is threatened. As the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment in 2005 pointed out, “nearly two thirds of the services provided by nature to humankind are found to be in decline worldwide.”1 Species are becoming extinct at levels not experienced except during major global catastrophes. Most major commercial fisheries are depleted, and ocean ecosystems disrupted. The problem of acid rain is spreading to newly industrializing areas, and the seasonal thinning in the Antarctic ozone layer has not yet abated. Generation of toxic waste is increasing worldwide. The environmental impact of a range of chemicals is becoming better understood at the same time it is discovered how environmentally mobile and pervasive they can be. Global climate change threatens to intensify many existing environmental problems and cause new ones, with rising sea levels and changing patterns of temperature and precipitation that will affect ecosystems worldwide.
